1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technology systems, and in particular to software utilized by such systems to implement methods and processes. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for creating and implementing a standardized template describing business processes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Business Transformation Outsourcing (BTO) occurs when a client organization engages a vendor (outsourcer) who will perform a set of business processes on the client's behalf. Oftentimes, the outsourcer often takes over all or some of the employees executing these processes at the client's location.
An exemplary arrangement is illustrated in FIG. 1, showing a BTO arrangement among Shared Service Centers (SSCs) 102 and clients 104. Note that each SSC 102 may service multiple clients 104 (such as SSC 102a and clients 104a-b), or a single client 102 may be serviced by multiple SSCs 104 (such as client 104b and SSCs 102a-b), or a client 104 may be serviced by only a single SSC 106 (such as client 104n and SSC 102n).
The use of an SSC enables the client to focus on its core business while gaining the benefits of lower cost, higher quality and speedier implementation of business processes offered by the outsourcer. These benefits often depend, however, on the outsourcer's ability to transform the client's business processes from highly customized to highly standardized versions.
BTO vendors (outsourcers) typically service multiple clients 104 from one or more SSCs 102, thus producing economy of scale. Thus, BTO vendors typically have a network of SSCs 102 to ensure their geographic reach covers all the client's requirements, such as spoken languages and legal/regulatory requirements.
Typically, BTO vendors attempt to rationalize business processes on multiple sites or countries in different regions for one client 104 into a single set of common processes. However, since each of the sites or countries 104 usually has different procedures followed in a same process, the results quickly become confusing. That is, each SSC 102 operated by the BTO vendor will quickly begin to have different departments or specifically allocated staff for each site, until a single SSC 102 starts to look like as many different companies are there are sites or countries, since each site or country will require SSC personnel who are trained to follow the unique business processes of each that site or country.